The state is not your friend (part 94)

Now this is an interesting one:

Ronnie Smith, the general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), claimed the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) was “over-zealous” after John McHugh, an English teacher from Dundee, was removed from the teachers’ register after being banned from driving for two years and fined £400.

Smith said teachers were being removed from the register for relatively minor offences outside work that had no bearing on their professional skills.

I think that an employer should be able to dismiss an employee for any reason whatsoever. Subject to contract of course.

Does that mean that I think that every employer is all wise? No of course not. Nor is every employee.

If the EIS were a genuine union that's primarily interested in its members' welfare they would have spotted the real issue here. Especially as they are teachers.

The real issue is that almost all teachers in Scotland are employed by the state. In a free society, no teacher would be employed by the state. They'd be self-employed, employed by companies, employed by co-operatives, employed by parents and employed in all sorts of ways yet to be imagined. Then, if one employer behaved "over-zealously" they'd very quickly find out that no one would continue to work for them.